1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to the field of cellular communications, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for improving the communications throughput over a cellular network.
2. Description of the Related Art
The cell phone industry is undergoing exponential growth, not only in the this country, but all over the world. In fact, it is well known that the over twenty percent of the adult population in the United States do not even have a traditional landline telephone. In addition to those who do not own a conventional telephone, nearly ninety percent of the adult population owns a wireless phone.
And the usage of cell phones is increasing as well over the use of traditional landline telephone coverage. In fact, one in seven adults now uses only cell phones. Whereas in the past cell phones were used when a landline was not available or under emergency conditions, lower carrier rates, affordability of family packages, and free mobile-to-mobile or friend-to-friend promotions have fostered in significant increases in usage. It is not uncommon today to walk into any public forum or facility and notice a majority of the people there talking on their cell phones.
The ability to communicate using a mobile phone, or mobile station, has been available since the middle of the last century. However, during the 1990's so-called “2G” or second generation mobile phone systems were provided that began the growth in both deployment and usage that we currently enjoy today. These initial systems predominately provided for the routing and reliable servicing of voice calls between parties. And, as one skilled in the art will appreciate, there are a number of timing and latency requirements associated with transmission and reception of voice data in order to maintain quality of service.
And although wireless cellular network technologies have continued to provide improvements related to the ability to process voice calls, there has also been an enormous pull on the industry to provide improvements related to the processing of data as well as voice. It is not uncommon today to find many cell phone users who not only place voice calls over a cellular network, but who also check their email, send text messages, and browse the internet.
Accordingly, a number of technologies are under development to improve the quality and throughput of data. These so-called “3G” or third generation cellular communications technologies are highly optimized for the reliable transfer of packet data instead of voice data. Hence, 3G data protocols such as EDGE® and EV-DO technologies are not generally characterized modulation techniques, but more so by performance metrics (e.g., 5 Megabits per second throughput). And this is because although a given data connection must be guaranteed some minimal level of latency and throughput, the timing required to transfer data such as a text message pales in comparison to that required to transfer voice information.
However, as one skilled in the art will appreciate, there are other means for processing voice calls that over a conventional cellular voice network. For example, voice over internet protocol (VOIP) has been used for many years as one way of taking advantage of the throughput capabilities of a high speed data network in order to send and receive voice information. And while cellular providers are certainly embracing VOIP to increase their network's ability to process a greater number of voice calls, the present inventors have noted that when a data network such as EV-DO is utilized in part to process VOIP calls, the throughput potential of that network significantly decreases due to the timing constraints associated with the processing of voice. More specifically, to maintain quality of service, voice information must be transmitted regularly and frequently, typically every 20 milliseconds. And when a packetized data network such as an EV-DO network is employed to transmit VOIP data, because EV-DO is a time division multiplexed delivery protocol, the timing requirements of VOIP dictate that regular time slots be allocated and reserved for the data associated with a VOIP call—regardless of the amount of voice data that is to be transmitted, which is most often a small amount of data relative to the data network's throughput ability.
Consequently, the present inventors have noted the inefficiencies associated with the utilization of data networks such as EV-DO to process VOIP data in addition to other types of data. They have observed significant decreases in these data networks throughput rates as a function of the number of VOIP calls which are processed.
Accordingly, what is needed is a technique that enables a cellular data network to process increasing numbers of VOIP calls that does not notably affect the network's throughput rate.
In addition, what is needed is an apparatus and method for interlacing VOIP data and other forms of data within an existing data protocol in order to maximize the data transfer rate.
What is also needed is a mechanism for processing VOIP calls over a data network that leverages unused bandwidth of an existing data network, but which also compatible with legacy cellular devices.